Up-and-coming local projects are being given a helping hand to flourish thanks to the Future Ealing Fund, which has been set up to support local people with big ideas about improving the local community.

Launched in March as the next stage of the council’s Transform your Space (TyS) initiative, the Future Ealing fund provides financial support to community-led ideas that help the recovery of business, neighbourhoods and the local area.

A share of the £100,000 fund is available up to a maximum of £10,000 and is being offered as a pledge towards people’s active crowdfunding campaigns.

TyS backed more than 25 local initiatives over more than five years to help turn neglected and underused pockets of space into community assets – and Future Ealing is building on this success by significantly broadening the scope of future projects.

Ideas looking to bring the local community together, improve public spaces and high streets, create hubs and help reduce the borough’s carbon footprint can all now apply for a share of the fund.

Community groups, mutual aid or volunteer networks, charities, tenant or residents’ associations, and social enterprises are all encouraged to get involved.

One project which could benefit from Future Ealing funding is the DIG, Green Lane, Hanwell, which aims to create regular opportunities to learn about gardening and horticulture.

The burgeoning project is being led by the based social enterprise Cultivate London and as DIG co-founder Sylvia Cordell explains, it is all about supporting the local community: “We want to enable local people to have job ready skills.

“Our programme of activities will address mental health, wellbeing, social isolation among much more and will be available to everyone who wants to get involved.

“We will also produce organic food will be shared by the participants and surplus will be offered to food banks.”

Councillor Deirdre Costigan, deputy leader and member for climate action said: “As we emerge from the worst period of the pandemic, there are new and huge challenges ahead. But we are also highly ambitious and committed to greening our borough by tackling the climate crisis, cleaning our air and ensuring the borough we build is sustainable long into the future.

“Our Future Ealing fund aims to transform the borough for people who live and work here we are putting funding in the hands of local people to help us do that.

“We want to hear from new groups that may have come together since the start of the pandemic as well as those who are more established with fresh ideas for the future in Ealing.”  

The council will be announcing the first projects to receive Future Ealing Funding this month – but there is still time to apply if you have a great idea. A second round of the Future Ealing Fund will be launched in the autumn.

Find out more about the Future Ealing fund via the Do Something Good website.